Man From 1973
by onebyone
Summary: Summary: After leaving his friends to enter through the magical doors of the Railway Arms, Gene Hunt gets very, very drunk. Next thing he knows he's waking up in 1973 Is he mad, back in time or still pissed? Will contain Galex-y goodness I promise.


**Summary: After leaving his friends to enter through the magical doors of the Railway Arms, Gene Hunt gets very, very drunk. Next thing he knows he's waking up in 1973 with Ray, Chris and Sam. Is he mad, back in time or still pissed? Will contain Galex-y goodness I promise.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes**

**A/N: I debated whether to post this on the Life on Mars page but it seemed that there was more action going on here. And Alex will show up very soon.**

Chapter One

It had been 6 months since Gene Hunt had watched his team walk through the doors of the Railway Arms, slip into the warm, unnaturally bright light and disappear forever, well as far as he was concerned at least. 6 months. And never in all his life had Gene Hunt known a longer 6 months. The days dragged interminably, the minutes crawled by at a snail's pace, the seconds scratched their way across the clock face. He had never felt so utterly miserable, not even when Stu had died, not even when his wife had left him, not even when Tyler… Because at least on those occasions he had his work. Tragedy may strike but he was a copper, and a copper he would remain as long as there were still scum to catch and decent people to protect. But now, all that seemed so pointless. Keats had ripped the ceiling off of his carefully constructed world and Gene had seen the stars again. Everything else seemed to pale into insignificance beneath the scope of those stars. Now he knew why he had forgotten before, he had needed to forget otherwise he would never get a bloody thing done.

It didn't help that his new team were about as much use as a gaggling of bleeding geese when it came to solving crimes. Christ, and he had thought Chris was incompetent. He was as smart as that bloke in wheelchair with the funny voice, compared to DI i-twat whittering on day and night about his stupid phone and his stupid office. Even Sam had taken a hint quicker than him.

Maybe Gene'd be able to bare it all, the loss of everyone he'd ever cared about, the questions about the nature of reality hanging over him, his sodding useless team of "crime fighters", if only he had his Quattro. The beautiful machine's sad demise cut him like a knife. Striding out of the station everyday and not seeing it carelessly parked in its usual space directly in front of the door was more pain than he ever thought man could feel for the loss of an inanimate object. Like loosing a vital piece of his anatomy. A very vital, very male piece of anatomy.

The only way to deal with this gradual collapse of the world around him was to black it all out, and the best way to blackout, he always thought, was the whiskey chaser. What ever the occasion, happy, sad or downright tragic alcohol never failed him. It was his only constant friend, if only because it did what nothing else could, and for a few hours distracted him from all the things that made him want to jump off the roof of the nearest multi-story car park.

And so he was now drowning his sorrows in one of the capital's most depressing pubs. A pub that smelt of boiled cabbage and garlic, where the patrons all looked as if they had grown out of the mould in the wallpaper, where the beer was watered down and any spirits all tasted like they'd been poured from an identical bottle of anti-freeze. It was no Luigi's, the grubby Italian had scarpered so fast he'd left the carbonara still cooling on the table, and Gene was in no mood to make World War Two jokes.

'We're closing up,' grunted the bartender, a man who'd been alternating between picking his nose and smearing grimy mugs with what appeared to be an oil rag.

'What? It's only…' Gene glanced at his watch but there was something wrong with his eyes tonight and the face was all blurry. 'Guess I'll have to take your word for it, mate.'

After a few false starts in getting his arms through the right holes of his coat, Gene was up and staggering into the night. With fingers that were all thumbs he lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag hoping it would smother the musty taste of bad lager. It didn't work, his mouth only ended up tasting like an ashtray but at least the combination of the cool night air and the nicotine fix had steadied his wobbling hands slightly. Now if he could just remember where he lived.

He couldn't see the stars that night. Heavy clouds and too many street lights hid them from view but Gene knew they were there. He let the calm of the quiet darkness wash over him like water as he meandered his way down the empty piss-stained pavement. London, as a city was making him feel sick. Too big, too modern, too lonely, and too bloody far South. He couldn't think what had possessed him to come down to this crowded, angry city in the first place. He could think of no reason to stay.

Gene's too large feet stumbled over thin air and he swayed into the road just as a car came squealing around the corner far too fast. It clipped his arm sending him spinning into the gutter. The car didn't stop. Gene staggered to his feet, yelling incoherently after the retreating headlights.

'Hey! Come back! I'm a bloody police officer I am. Wanker.'

But the car was nothing more than a screech of brakes in the distance. Gene rubbed his arm which hurt but in a distant throbbing way rather than anything that felt particularly life threatening. He'd wake up in the morning with another bruise who couldn't remember getting.

He stopped for a piss in a doorway, and vomited in another but carried along his way, sometimes forgetting where he was supposed to be going as his pace started to slow. Soon his body began to grow heavy and it seemed to Gene madness to continue walking to wherever it was he was meant to be going when he felt so very tired. Before he had even slumped to the gutter, blackness was already creeping in from the dark corners of his eyes.

'_Guv! Guv!'_

Gene groaned, the reverberations of which sent a painful earthquake rocketing around his skull. The hand shaking him was insistent, irritatingly insistent so as to make him want to snap said arm in half. Just as soon as he regained the use of his lead lined limbs. Couldn't those dithering nancys at CID do anything without him? Couldn't they just let him alone for 5 minutes of kip?

'Guv! Guv, wake up.' Evidently not.

With a Herculean effort Gene managed to grunt, 'Piss off. Sleeping.' His mouth was slack around the words.

After that he must have drifted back into unconsciousness, because the next thing he knew he was starting awake, dripping wet and spluttering. 'Bloody Hell!'

He scrubbed the water from his eyes with clumsy paws, blinking to clear his blurred vision to fix the culprit with a fiery glare. Only the anger died in his eyes when he saw what was sitting right in front of him.

A moustache, a very familiar moustache. And attached to that moustache, a man.

'Ray?' he croaked, his voice a little higher and more breathy than usual. He quickly cleared his throat and reverted back to a pitch that was a little more masculine. 'How the fu-?'

'You all right, Guv?' said Ray blankly. 'You look a bit pale. Probably something to do with the bender you went on last night. You were legless.'

'How are you here?' asked Gene more firmly and with a little more customary threat behind him. 'You went to the Pub.'

Ray frowned, a familiar gormless expression. 'Yeah,' he answered slowly. 'We all did. Left about eleven, right after your topless table dance. I tell you, no man should have to see that.'

'What?'

'Look, I sent Chris to go and bring the car round…'

'Chris?'

'Yeah.' Ray was looking at him with something that might be construed as concern, which on Ray Carling was worrying. 'Are you gonna be okay for work, Guv? Tyler sent us to go and look for you when you didn't show up this morning but we can always say we didn't find you if you feel like throwing a sickie.'

Gene froze. 'Hang about, _Tyler_?'

'I know. Don't ask me who died and made him king of the bloody empire, but to be honest I were glad to get out of the office for a bit. It was all getting' a bit…'

It was then that Gene actually woke up and took note of his surroundings, the weak morning sunlight had been diluting his vision. He was lying on the pavement outside the Railway Arms, but not a mystical, portal to an afterlife Railway Arms, the Railway Arms as he had known it all those years in Manchester. And come to think of it, the gutter felt strange. Gene Hunt had fallen asleep at the side of enough roads to know the difference between posh London tarmac and proper Northern gravel. How did you fall asleep in London and wake up a few hours later in Manchester?

And then there was Ray's hair, completely flat on his head. Gene had almost forgotten what he looked like without that daft perm.

'Ray, what year is it?'

'Year, Guv?'

'Yes, you dippy prat! What year is it?'

'1973, Guv.'

Gene almost laughed out loud at the irony. All those years looking at Sam, and then Alex sideways, listening to them spouting their nonsense about the future and here he was thrown into the same position. Either this was a dream and his subconscious had final got a proper grasp of irony, or the higher power behind this temporal transfer had an hilarious sense of humour.

He rubbed his face tiredly as a way to hide the bitter smile from Ray. The arms he used where covered by a familiar camel coat, now slightly damp and stinking. 'This isn't water you threw over me, is it?'

Ray looked away guiltily. 'No, it's a warm pint. I nipped into the Arms to see if there was anything I could use to wake you up. Nelson said he don't do water. No harm done, though. You already stank like a brewery.'

The car that suddenly barrelled round the corner too Gene's breath away, stealing the retort he was planning to throw at Ray about paying for his drying cleaning bill. The Ford Cortina III. It was no Quattro but he had loved that car. He remembered the day the engine had fallen out of it after one too many angry gear changes. That had been over 4 years ago, or 6 years in the future depending on how you looked at it. Chris had held a funeral for the knackered car, killed in the line of duty and Gene had had a right go at him for getting all soft and sentimental, not admitting to anyone that the loss of his faithful motor had got him a little down as well.

The Cortina mounted the curb dangerously and braked far too heavily, but when Chris got out of the driver's seat he was smiling like a kid just off the Big Dipper. And he was a kid, a floppy haired kid with as much bouncing enthusiasm as a terrier. Living day to day with Chris in London, he hadn't noticed how much stiller and more mature the baby of CID had become. He wouldn't miss the highlights though. What was it about the 80s and nancy hair?

'All right, Guv?' Chris grinned.

'Chris?'

Gene staggered to his feet and leaning on Ray and the bonnet of the car reeled towards Chris. Then he did something he could only ever remember doing on three occasions in his life; the day of Sam's funeral, the night Shaz was stabbed and that other time. He hugged Chris Skelton.

It was brief but when they final broke apart Chris' eyes were wide and scared. Ray's eyes flicked backwards and forward between them.

'Chris,' said Gene.

'Yeah, Guv?' he whispered.

'If I ever catch you driving my car like that again you'll be spending the next month in the boot.'

And the tension was gone. Gene could see both Chris and Ray breathe visible sighs of relief that their DCI had returned to normal.

'Right!' said Gene clapping his hands together with a relish he hadn't felt in a long time. Who cared how to had happened he was back where he was meant to be, with his team. 'Let's get going. Scum to catch, streets to clean.'

**A/N: First chapter. How'd it go? Feel like some more, let me know. **


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